Category Archives: Gardening

Worms, pets, gnats, you name it, are quite bothersome and most annoying in a home garden. After all, it takes effort and planning to garden and is not an easy feat to get rid of what ails it. Pests come and go and there is every chemical on the market to get rid of them. What is hard to comprehend, is why put a chemical on your garden when if you are like me, your garden is organic and made with homemade compost. It defeats the purpose.

Most recently, it was discovered that cabbage worms have made their beds among the baby brussel sprout plants. Here is how to make your own inexpensive “Worm Spray”.

You will need:

Small plastic spray bottle (what is shown is travel size)

Fish Oil Capsules

A pin to pierce the capsules

Garlic Water/Juice

Water

Take an empty spray bottle and fill 3/4 with water.

With a teaspoon, measure two teaspoons of juice or water from your minced garlic jar. To make a homemade version if you don’t buy jarred garlic, mince a clove of garlic and add water letting it infuse in the fridge for a few days. That garlic acts as a deterant for the butterfly so they don’t land on the leaves to lay eggs. Pierce a few fish oil capsules and empty in the bottle. I would highly recommend wearing gloves for this because the fish oil smell lingers on the skin. Yuk! Two liberal applications emptied the spray bottle so there is no waste depending on the size of the area you are spraying. I had just four plants.

Shake and spray! It is that easy. It smelled like fish, but was very effective. It took about two applications within a week avoiding watering the leaves, but rather let the water run near the stem to not wash off the mixture. It has been about two weeks and the plants show no signs of new eggs or new worms. I’m not sure if this remedy will work on all plants. But for brussel sprouts it worked like a charm. Cabbage worms seem to love really green veggies like broccoli, cabbage, and brussel sprouts. Best part is most people already have the ingredients in their home making it a very affordable option.

Total cost for this little project was .50 for the travel size spray bottle.

During my morning coffee outside enjoying our beautiful garden, I discovered that I now have flowers!! Oh…if you could see me jumping for joy and then spilling my coffee on my foot, you’d laugh like hell. Seriously, it’s coffee abuse! Coffee to me is like air. Despite this little mishap and delay in admiring my garden, I realized that two plants have flowered. I’m so incredibly happy! I’ve been stalking my garden since planting hoping that by doing so I can catch anything that may go wrong and quickly fix it. Or am I being paranoid? I don’t know. But for now, a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do. After so many failed attempts I’m determined to bear fruit.

My soil is doing well. I see no bugs or insects crawling, no white spots on the leaves of my plants, no yellow leaves indicating that they are over watered, just happy and healthy plants! Phew! I have noticed that they’ve grown taller too. It’s amazing what a 5 days can do in regards to their growth. Here’s a peek 🙂

Spring is finally here! This means….take 4 or 5 or I can’t even remember what season we are on with our adventure into gardening :P. We try so hard to deal with our environment the best way we can and make the most out of it. Sometimes that involves doing things in a way that you really didn’t originally intend. Environment is so important and I read it all the time among homesteaders that adaptation is the name of the game. I had my heart set on in-ground gardening. But seeming we cannot alter our landscape and after numerous failed attempts I decided to go above ground. Most recently, my darlin babydoll built me a raised garden bed out of cedarwood. You can view the post here. He did such an amazing job! I created a small area near the garden where we can easily water plants and grab our compost that we also made ourselves. Easily accessible from all four sides and large enough to house what our environment currently allows. We positioned the bed in a way that only allows 6-8 hours of direct sunlight. Being in North Texas, we can get temperatures over 105 degrees. In past attempts, our garden was at the furthest point in our yard and in direct sun light 12 + hours a day. See the problem? Now, the garden gets the sun it needs yet around 5pm is shaded by the roof of our house. Problem solved! Although, I’m thinking about adding yet another 4′ x 8′ raised bed along side of it in the fall. Making half of our yard a garden.

I spent most of the day Sunday arranging the garden, paying much attention to the “flood zone” in our backyard and also where the sun hits. We have a good size yard for where we live which is a stone’s throw from a huge city. Our lawn is in the shape of an L, around a concrete patio, and is slanted, uneven, and floods. Thank God we rent! Otherwise this mama would be gutting the yard LOL! Our goal in just a few short years it to get on some good acreage, about 10-15 acres. So I’m trying to find inexpensive ways to get around the obstacles we face because our time here is temporary, but long enough where I can do “something”.

This year we planted:

Brandy Wine Tomatoes

Early Girl Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes

Brussel Sprouts

Purple Bell Peppers

Orange Bell Peppers

Green Bell Peppers

Jalapeno Peppers

Strawberries

Blueberries

Comfrey

Chamomile

Rosemary

Purple Basil

Cilantro

Italian Oregano

Cucumber

Rosemary

Purple Basil

Tomatoes

Flowers for Pollination

Impatiens

Growing Fruit

Roses

Beautiful Texan sky from the Rosemary’s point of view. Not too shabby 🙂

In due time, I will have the garden of my dreams. We eventually want to plant every vegetable and herb we consume. Until then, my dream is get one plant to bear fruit. The compost is doing very well and much better than expected. I almost have dirt! I’m so glad I tried it and made the bin myself. Almost nothing goes to waste in our home and especially during canning season.

I’d love to see photos of your gardens! Please post a photo of your garden in the comments.

I’m so damn excited to finally have our raised garden bed built! I’ve wanted one for quite some time now and finally got around to doing it. Our soil is very poor where we are and mainly solid clay. After two years of failed in ground attempts, opting for a raised garden bed was the best option. Plus, we moved the garden to another more desirable part of the yard. Our prior garden was in the direct Texan sun for about 12hrs a day and burned everything planted. Now, as the sun sets, a shadow is cast from the house leaving about 6-8 hours of direct sunlight.

We built the bed 4ft x 8 ft out of untreated Cedar wood. Cedar is a good insect repellant.

You will Need:

Six 8′ long 6″ wide boards of any untreated wood (cedar is the more pricey option)

Two 2″x 2″ x 8′ boards

Lowes offers wood cutting services to any size. So no need for expensive tools. Yay!

Cut the following measurements:

Leave four 8′ x 6″ boards for your long sides. 2 boards on each side so that your long side walls are 12″ high.

Cut two of those same boards to 4′ lengths for the shortest sides and 12″ high.

Cut the 2″ x 2″ 8′ boards in 4′ lengths.

Cut one of the 2″ x 2″ 4′ boards into 1′ pieces. These will be your corner pieces. One piece per corner.

Take one 2″ x 2″ x 1′ piece, one 4′ board and one 8′ board and screw or nail together making two holes in each board. This will strengthen the corners. Do this to the other three corners to create a box.

Now do the second level, drilling into each corner 2″ x 2″ x 1′ piece. Now you have a 12″ high 4′ x 8′ raised bed.

Take two 4′ 2″x 2″ boards and screw in the very middle to make two 4′ x 4′ wide sections. This will stabilize the bed and help prevent bulging sides.

This took the following to fill 3/4 of the way up:

22 bags of soil

1 bag pebbles

1 bag mulch

Total cost with tax was less than $75 to build. We chose untreated cedar wood and cut all of the wood for free. We had screws already and chose screws because we are still renting our home. We can move this later.

Total build time about 30 minutes with an electric drill.

We found this to be a much better way to do a raised bed. A lot of the online kits we looked at were extremely expensive and were flimsy looking or didn’t get rave reviews for being durable. This way, we built ourselves, built it strong, and learned a new skill.

Spring is coming quick! I cannot wait. I’m nearly jumping up and down wishing it was here right now. But all in due time, God’s patience is such a blessing. Look at what he creates! This morning I noticed that our roses are finally blooming. This is our first rose bush and it grew out of control last year making it very bushy looking. It was quite the feat to cut down all of the branches especially seeming the stems were really thick. I was quite surprised. Now down to a manageable bush, I am very thankful we got flowers. I had never cut a rose bush before and it was really a cut and pray type situation.

Halfway through, I noticed plastic. What! Who has plastic in a rose bush. I began to just grab it and quickly noticed that it was the same plastic we covered our garden with last year and about this time of year too. I had to cut numerous branches to get to where the plastic was, but oh my gosh! It was a small birds nest. Very well constructed and quite elaborate for using twigs and plastic. Don’t you think?

Hey! It kept me amused for a few. 😛

Our rose bush is beautiful when fully bloomed and the thick thorns have no mercy. So why would a small bird build a nest among thorns? It was beautiful and I had to stand back and just admire it. The home was built among something that was strong, painful, yet beautiful. A mom going to great lengths to protect her children. We may be different creatures, but it melted my heart to see how intricately placed the nest was. Protection. Just like you and I. I love that we have small animals around our home and that I’m able to be blessed to see such things. I often watch the squirrels from my office window who walk along the outside window sills and the rabbits scurrying across the front yard in the early hours of morning. Nature always makes me smile. In some way, we are all the same on some level. At least I’d like to think so.

Suburban Homesteading & Frugal Living with a Twist!

Welcome Lovelies!

My name is "L". It's so nice to meet you! We have so much to share and tell you. There is something here for everyone, no matter if you homestead or not. Those who don't know where to begin, those starting out, and those who have been doing it awhile. Everyone can learn something. Even after four years of homesteading, there is still a mountain of things to learn.

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